Royal Commission told police gave no information to parents after YMCA sexual abuse allegations

Former childcare worker Jonathan Lord has been jailed after admitting the abuse.

AAP Image: supplied

The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse has been told that police could have responded better in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse by a YMCA childcare worker.

Parents have told the commission they hit a brick wall when they tried to find information about whether their children were safe or had been abused by a paedophile.

In early October 2011, police received a complaint that Jonathan Lord had abused a child during a YMCA excursion.

Lord had been stood down from duty and in the weeks that followed, more victims came forward to police.

Parents with children in the YMCA's childcare services south of Sydney were alarmed by the allegations.

One witness known as AW told the royal commission on Thursday about the confusion and distress of parents who had nowhere to go to get information or advice.

"It's not every day that you come to the understanding that your child may have been sexually abused by someone in an institution," AW said.

"There was nothing. We were told 15 days later as to how to ask questions about abuse, but how can any parent sit around for 15 days and wonder and not ask their child about something that might have happened?

"I understood that we weren't allowed to ask leading questions, but I didn't know what those leading questions were in terms of child sex abuse.

"And we worried about it for some time and some sort of direction would have been good. Not just good but it was necessary. It was an emergency."

As police conducted their investigations, the YMCA held a meeting for parents.

But Detective Baker said it was something that police were reluctant to attend.

"It was in the very early stages of a serious criminal investigation," he said.

"There were multiple issues that we had to manage. Those issues included serious contamination of evidence.

"If we were to walk into a meeting shortly after, on the 17th, and provide Lord's name, would parents be talking to one another about children's disclosures?

"Would children be talking to one another about each other's disclosures? Would the versions be diluted or contaminated?

"Every decision that we had to make at that early stage in the investigation was to advance the criminal investigation."

Parents critical of police response

Earlier this week parents of victims told the royal commission that they were critical of the way police responded.

Detective Superintendent Maria Rustja is the commander of the Child Abuse Squad in the New South Wales Police and says there was confusion in the community about who to contact.

"It is clear that whilst we had the hotline set up, there was confusion in the community about who to ring and how to get the information," she said.

"That is clear and we have already put something together which we think may assist the commission and more importantly, though, assist the families in these circumstances in the future about the hotline, this point of contact."

Detective Rustja defended the police protocol of interviewing child victims without their parents in the room.

But she conceded that police are supposed to tell the parents about the content of those interviews.

Rustja: I'm certainly not going to defend or deny what this lady experienced because it would be totally traumatic.

What I can say is, and be very comfortable in saying is: we do tell the parents what happened to their child.

Furness: Well, in the event that this parent didn't know, her not being told was contrary to police procedures. Is that right?